Appreciation of the works of Foley Berger’s Bar Counter

This painting is an Impressionist canvas oil painting created by Manet in 1882 and is his masterpiece in his later years. In this painting he portrayed for the last time the noisy and luxurious life in Paris that he knew and loved. The painting depicts a blonde waitress standing behind the bar, wearing a tight top decorated with wide lace, with her hands on the countertop, entertaining customers. Behind her is a large mirror, and everything outside the painting is dimly included in it. The bar room was brightly lit and full of guests, and the lively and gorgeous scene was vividly displayed. In order to strengthen the contrast between the spaces, the painter deliberately used large glass mirrors as the background, and used a dazzling array of wine bottles and glasses as the background, making the picture rich and vivid, as if the viewer himself was standing in front of the stage. After this painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1882, it received widespread acclaim.

Manet is a representative painter and spiritual leader of the French Impressionist school. His biggest feature is that he breaks the traditional pursuit of space in painting and tends to be flat and decorative. His paintings have novel compositions, generalized shapes, bright and contrasting colors, and perfectly combine traditional and modern painting elements. "Folly Berger's Bar", as his representative work, places the model in a bar filled with food and wine for sketching. Manet did not imitate nature, but processed the picture according to the laws of art and his own subjective understanding: the tone of the picture is exceptionally bright, the colors are vivid and active, and it is light and harmonious. The combination of characters and environment is natural and clever. He arranged the characters in the center of the picture to highlight the strong visual impact and fully demonstrate the painter's superb composition skills. The brushstrokes of the entire painting are smooth and free, with a certain degree of expansion and contraction, and the colors are rich, gorgeous and warm, forming a beautiful contrast between the main and secondary, the characters and the environment, thereby creating an imaginative artistic space and depicting the bar in the artist's mind.

Chaniot wrote about the situation when he saw Manet create this painting: When I returned to Paris in January 1882, the first person I visited was Manet. At that time, he was painting the oil painting "The Bar of Foley Berger". The model was a very beautiful girl, standing behind a table filled with food and wine. Although Manet used models in his paintings, he was not a natural imitator; I particularly noticed the simplicity of his masterful approach. The shape of this woman's head is very obvious, but that doesn't mean that's what she looks like. Everything has been recreated by him; the tones are brighter than they actually are, the colors more vivid, the arrangements of the moonlit night more compact. The effect is one of noble and airy harmony. When I left, he stopped painting and talked to me. He said: "Simplification is necessary in art, and it is also a kind of refinement... This description can help understand this painting and Manet's artistic thoughts. This painting shows his classical nobility The temperament and gorgeous Impressionist colors can be seen as the glorious ending of the symphony of his life.